A preference for local

Since we began salmon farming in the Marlborough Sounds in 1984, New Zealand King Salmon has made a sustained effort to use local Marlborough – or New Zealand-based – businesses wherever possible, along with employing local Marlborough staff. We are a part of Marlborough and we want to support the region that sustains our business.

Baz Henare, Seawater Operations Manager for New Zealand King Salmon, says that it’s just makes sense to go local whenever possible. “Everything is global these days, but we still have a strong sense of community and growing the local capacity. It’s in everyone’s best interest for us to use local suppliers when we can.”

Local suppliers we use include water taxis and boat transport through companies like Marlborough Tour Company and Picton Water Taxis and road transporting company KAM Transport who now have used the opportunity of contracts with us to set up a Picton base, employing locals. For mooring systems on our farms we use Picton-based N-Viron.

Engineering suppliers include Cuddons in Blenheim, and Picton Manufacturing, Gregory Engineering and Rothwell Engineering in Picton. For electrical and electrotech work we use Waves Electrical in Picton, and JLE Electricians in Nelson. For marine equipment and repairs our key suppliers are Boating Marlborough and Oddies in Waikawa.

Because of the commercial nature of our business however, Baz says NZKS is not always able to contract work to local businesses. He says this can be because international companies offer highly competitive pricing that local suppliers cannot come close to matching and/or because NZKS requires extremely specialised bespoke products that cannot currently be supplied by local companies.

When this happens, we make every effort to engage with local suppliers during the tender process to be as transparent as possible about what is required, so they have a better opportunity to look at making their pricing competitive and/or upskilling staff or capacity to be better placed to create the specialist products we require.

We work on an ‘as required’ basis, so we only order what is currently needed. This incremental approach gives local business plenty of future opportunities to put their best foot forward when they pitch for future work.

Looking to the future our vision is to go local wherever possible in every aspect of our business. To do this we in turn need support and investment in providing the high quality, low cost products we require.